Piece of gold foil with an Orphic poem dedicated to Apollo in what is thought to be Doric Greek – £45,000 at Bloomsbury Auctions.
Sold online at £45,000, it was part of The History of Western Script auction, a further selection of treasures from the Schøyen Collections offered at Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on December 7.
The poem has been reverse-impressed into the gold foil – probably in southern Greece, though perhaps in Crete, Rhodes or even an a city in Asia Minor, said the saleroom.
In this golden form, his inscription in iambic trimeters may well have been intended to be attached to the staff used by Agestratos himself, a man who, while he may well have been a wandering poet, was obviously a figure of some wealth and importance.
